USDA released the U.S. Canada Hog Inventory Report yesterday. The U.S. data is based on the quarterly Hogs and Pigs Report which is as of the second quarter ending on 1 June and the data for Canada is a semi-annual report as of 1 July. This is always an insightful benchmark because of the integration of the two countries’ industries, though Canada’s swine herd is typically about 19 percent of the U.S. swine herd. As of mid-year, the inventory of all hogs and pigs in the U.S. and Canada was 88.4 million head, which was 101 percent of 2023 and 102 percent of 2022, its recent low point. The volatility of the hogs and pigs inventory in the past several years reflects the discovery of ASF in China and the disrupti...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.